Democratic Citizenship

by

LAST REVIEWED: 27 September 2017

LAST MODIFIED: 29 November 2011

DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756223-0013

Introduction

Democratic citizenship is membership in a political democracy. The unit for democratic membership does not have to be a nation-state: it can also be a city or some other subnational jurisdiction (a canton, province, or state) or a supranational order (as in the case of a regional compact, such as the European Union). There can be dual citizenship, increasingly common in a globalized world. Wherever it occurs, democratic citizenship features a bundle of enforceable rights and liberties, policy benefits, enforceable obligations to the jurisdiction (such as being law-abiding), affective attachment to some degree to the democracy, weaker or stronger capacities of citizens for active membership (such as cognitive evaluation of public debate and policy choices and participation), better or worse appreciation by the citizen of widely discussed relevant norms (such as toleration), and stronger or weaker awareness of collective memories that partly define the meaning and history of membership in the political unit. Because people live their lives in a democratic jurisdiction, citizenship is a life course experience over time. But democracies do coexist with free markets and societies, so the activity of involvement in democratic citizenship is hardly full-time. Instead, it is—perhaps desirably—undertaken only episodically, typically before, during, and after a range of civic acts, such as paying attention to public events, paying taxes, collecting policy benefits, voting, or flag commemoration. Democratic citizenship is not a constant or burdensome activity or experience, not least because democratic government is periodically accountable representative government performed by elected and appointed officials as opposed to continuous popular control and management of government. The works included here are drawn principally from Anglo-American and western European cases, but this is done without any implication at all that these cases exhaust the topic.

General Overviews

Three forms of intellectual and academic inquiry that focus on democratic citizenship and that are represented here are political philosophy, which treats what democratic citizenship can and ought to be like; political science, which treats what democratic citizenship is and has actually been like in and across political jurisdictions; and sociology, which treats how, why, and when democratic citizenship becomes the terrain for group conflict or cooperation. But there is no single work or school that integrates these diverse disciplinary approaches to the topic. Bellamy 2008 and Magnette 2005 provide short surveys of the idea of citizenship. In contrast, Christiano 2008 allows for exploration among related topics. Kymlicka and Norman 1994, Walzer 1989, and Zvesper 2007 succinctly present dualisms and contrasts that go with the topic of democratic citizenship.

Bellamy, Richard. Citizenship: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

An overview of democratic citizenship coupled to a bibliography and links to related entries and topics, such as “Liberalism,” “Civil Rights,” “Political Representation,” “Rights,” and “Constitutionalism.”

Kymlicka, Will, and Wayne Norman. “Return of the Citizen: A Survey of Recent Work on Citizenship Theory.” Ethics 104.2 (1994): 352–381.

Written from a neoconservative perspective in that it attacks multicultural views of democratic citizenship. Summarizes the multicultural approach, surveys a range of ancient and modern political philosophers, shows that discussions by Plato and Aristotle are useful to modern debate about democratic citizenship, and connects liberal democratic citizenship to military service and patriotism.